Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Middle East Exhaustion: Tipping Point

Cairo
is aflame again, with scores of protesters killed, bloody fruit of an Arab
Spring that keeps yielding more death than democracy. As tolls rise, it is past
time to rethink the Bush-Cheney Neocon doctrine of a strong America bestowing
freedom on benighted nations across the world.

Now
the Joint Chiefs give Congress a report that overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in
Syria would be “a vast undertaking, costing billions of dollars, and could
backfire on the United States...Once we take action, we should be prepared for
what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

John
McCain, of course, dislikes that assessment, but the reality of the past decade
is expenditure of American blood and treasure in the Middle East, from Iraq to
Afghanistan and elsewhere with, to put it charitably, mixed results at best.

No
responsible critic would advocate, in the light of a nuclear Pakistan and
wannabe Iran, complete withdrawal from the region, but isn’t it past time for a
lighter footprint?

“Syria
is committing suicide--tearing itself asunder in a civil war that, with the
support and prodding of outside forces, has increasingly become an exercise in
sectarian blood-letting. American combat forces may have left Iraq, but the
country has not found a way to make peace with itself. Daily terrorist bombings
are killing scores of civilians, while a dysfunctional sectarian government
appears to be focused more on prosecuting and persecuting its opponents than
providing for the needs of its people...

”Lebanon,
reeling from the pressure emanating from Syria next door, is once again
teetering on the brink of civil conflict. Meanwhile, the conflicts raging
around Jordan are having a destabilizing impact with that country receiving yet
another massive influx of refugees.”

What
the region needs now, the Arab spokesman asserts, is “a unified revolt against
sectarian division and recognition of the futility of its self-destructive
path.”

Before
outsiders can truly help in that undertaking, the US is like a club-footed
giant in the region, stumbling around with the best of intentions but more
likely to bring damage than democracy with its blundering attempts to be
helpful.